Streetsblog New York City

You read that right.

Don't celebrate just yet, but legislation authorizing the use of camera enforcement to keep New York City bus lanes clear of traffic -- a.k.a. the bus cam bill -- just cleared the Assembly Transportation Committee.

While it might seem sort of pathetic to tout a committee vote in Albany that gets New York City one step closer to effective enforcement of the laws on its own streets, it's also worth recalling that very similar legislation died in the same committee two years ago. The bill still has to clear the Codes Committee, the Rules Committee, the full Assembly, and the full State Senate, but the fact that it has cleared Rochester Democrat David Gantt's Transportation Committee strongly indicates that Speaker Sheldon Silver intends to let the bill pass in his house.

With NYCDOT and the MTA relying on enforcement, not separated lanes, to keep traffic from interfering with transit service on their rapid bus corridors, cameras will be critical to success. After camera enforcement was enacted in London, average travel speeds in bus lanes improved 12.6 percent, according to NYCDOT. For now, the prospects for better bus service on the city's dedicated lanes are looking pretty good. (Successful passage of the bus cam bill could also free up NYPD resources to enforce other traffic violations, like failure-to-yield to pedestrians or bike lane blocking.)

We'll have more information on the committee vote later today.

Update: Our man in Albany, Alan Wechsler, files this bit of color from what appears to have been an utterly bland and uneventful committee hearing:

The bill received no discussion during the short meeting. After the meeting, Chairman David Gantt (D-Rochester) declined to comment about why the bill had been held up before.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and transportation committee chair Jimmy Vacca gave better service for New York City bus riders a boost yesterday, speaking in favor of bus lane enforcement legislation currently making its way through Albany. The legislation is a critical component in the city's plans to expand and enhance Select Bus Service, including the route on First and Second Avenues officially announced yesterday.

While the state legislature will ultimately decide the fate of the bus cam bill, before that can happen, the City Council has to pass a "home rule message" supporting the measure. At a meeting of the council's Democratic caucus yesterday, both Quinn and Vacca spoke in support of bus lane cameras.

"The discussion was very positive," said Vacca. "If we're asking people to get out of their cars, it's helpful, especially in Manhattan, to allow people to get into buses that move faster. This will help buses move faster."

The council may vote on the home rule request as soon as tomorrow. 

In Albany, the Senate Transportation Committee will vote on the bus cam bill today. A reliable source tells us that he expects the bill to pass the transportation committee and the full Senate soon. 

The Assembly, however, has always been the heavier lift for bus lane cameras. The same source tells us that transportation committee chair David Gantt remains opposed to camera enforcement and that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who could advance the legislation at any time, has given no indication of which way he's leaning.

The bill currently has 47 sponsors, 19 of whom serve on the 26-person transportation committee. The main sponsor in the Assembly, Jonathan Bing, has filed a procedural motion that will guarantee a vote in committee if the City Council passes a home rule message. Without the approval of Silver and the Assembly leadership, however, that vote could still go nowhere, despite broad support on the committee. 

Urgency is mounting in Albany to pass a bus lane enforcement bill, as the end of the legislative session draws near and the launch date of rapid bus service on the East Side of Manhattan approaches.

To give bus riders faster trips, the MTA and NYCDOT are counting on enforcement cameras to keep dedicated lanes clear of car traffic. Before they can implement a bus cam program, Albany needs to give the go-ahead. Streetsblog has been following the ups and downs of that legislation for more than two years now. The last time we checked in, the Assembly had rejected a budget amendment to establish a bus cam program, citing cost concerns that didn't add up.

With only a few weeks left before the legislature goes home for the year, time is running out to get something done. There are two options: convince Sheldon Silver and the Assembly leadership to adopt bus cameras in their budget, or pursue a separate bill that will have to go through Rochester Democrat David Gantt, the chair of the Assembly transportation committee who shot down bus cams in 2008.

Bus cam supporters have recently made some progress on both fronts. The State Senate has agreed in principle to include the governor's version of the bus camera program in their budget, according to a source in the capitol following the negotiations. (At first, the Senate had proposed a watered-down version of the program.) That still leaves the Assembly, where leadership has yet to indicate any change in their position.

If bus cams don't make it into the Assembly budget, there appears to be extensive support for a standalone bill among rank-and-file Assembly members.

Read more...

Chances to improve service on New York City's dedicated bus lanes appeared to narrow yesterday, when Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and his Democratic conference rejected bus lane enforcement cameras in the chamber's draft budget. Camera enforcement is one of the linchpins in the city's strategy to put the "rapid" in Bus Rapid Transit. Without it, bus riders will remain stymied by traffic, even on Select Bus Service routes.

New York has the nation's slowest bus service and its biggest bus fleet, serving more than two and a half million daily riders. The city's police force doesn't have the manpower to keep bus lanes clear, and it's only getting smaller. Camera enforcement, which has made service faster and more reliable in London by cutting violations 60 percent, has proven capable of solving some of the problems that plague New York's bus system.

"Right now, bus lanes are routinely violated by many vehicles, resulting in chronic delays for hundreds of thousands of bus riders," said Gene Russianoff, staff attorney for the Straphangers Campaign. "Using enforcement cameras in city bus lanes could turn that around, making bus service more reliable and helping to reduce congestion."

Two years ago, bus cams died in the Assembly transportation committee, chaired by Rochester representative David Gantt. This time around, they were stripped out in the Assembly's opaque budget process. One advocate in Albany told Streetsblog that rank-and-file Assembly members were unaware that the bus cam provisions had been slashed from the budget resolution as late as yesterday afternoon, hours before the resolution was unveiled and voted on.

Gantt has no veto power in the Assembly budget process, which the Speaker himself exerts enormous influence over. The budget resolution only had to clear a vote in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Upper Manhattan representative Denny Farrell, before the Speaker brought it to the full floor last night. "It's our view that Silver maintains pretty tight control over the budget process," said Laura Seago, a research associate at the Brennan Center for Justice and co-author of the 2009 report on Albany dysfunction, "Still Broken" [PDF].

Neither Silver nor Gantt's office has returned Streetsblog's requests for comment at this time.

Restoring the bus cam program in the final budget now hinges on negotiations between the Assembly, the State Senate, and the governor's office. Those talks, which happen behind closed doors, are expected to heat up sometime after the official budget deadline of April 1.

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Sheldon Silver's office just announced the outlines of the Assembly's budget resolution. On a day when transit riders saw subway and bus cuts start to loom a whole lot closer, the speaker and his conference have piled on. Here's the final line item under "Metropolitan Transportation Authority" in the summary of the Assembly's budget [PDF]:

• The Assembly rejects the Executive proposal to authorize: Bus Lane Photo Devices
  

Unmentioned in this terse description is the fact that these "photo devices" can deliver better service for millions of bus riders. Bus cams were included in Governor Paterson's executive budget proposal, and the State Senate has proposed a weaker but still substantial bus camera program. The Assembly has apparently decided to strip them out of the budget entirely.

The news from the Assembly does not represent the last word on bus cams, and there will be opportunities to restore bus lane enforcement in the final budget. But for now this budget proposal has sent a clear message: Bus riders and better transit service do not matter to the Assembly leadership. We'll have more on this story tomorrow.

City district attorneys and NYPD have reached an agreement that could speed the process of collecting blood evidence from drunk driving suspects who refuse to take breath tests.

The Times reported on Friday that the new procedures, brought about in the wake of recent pedestrian fatalities caused by off-duty NYPD personnel, may reduce the time it takes for officers to obtain a warrant by at least two hours, down from the current average of seven hours. According to the Times, officials are also discussing whether blood might be drawn by doctors or EMTs at locations other than hospitals.

Depending on what course those discussions take, such changes could hinge on approval from Albany. As we reported previously, prosecutors are already pushing legislation that would remove the requirement that a doctor be present to supervise blood withdrawals. Inexplicably, state lawmakers -- and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in particular -- have a history of coddling drunk drivers, the latest example being the fight over "Leandra's Law," playing out at the capitol as of this writing.

While a truly comprehensive bill would aim to protect people of all ages whether or not they are in a car, one would think a measure to toughen penalties for DWI with children in the vehicle would fly to the governor's desk. Yet Silver has now attempted to water down two such measures. The original Leandra's Law would make it a felony to get behind the wheel with a BAC of .08 if passengers under the age of 16 are present. Assembly Dems want to raise the felony BAC level to .18, more than twice the legal limit for driving. Carmen Huertas, the driver in the October crash that killed Leandra Rosado, had a BAC of .132.

According to Monique Dixon, in 2005 Silver wavered in his support for a bill to make it a felony in New York State to kill someone while driving drunk. Dixon, whose 11-year-old son Vasean Alleyne was killed by a drunk driver who spent 38 days in jail, eventually won passage of a tougher "Vasean's Law" than Silver wanted.

Even the newly agreed upon protocol for collecting blood evidence leaves New York woefully behind. Prosecutors are working on a bill to remove the up-front warrant requirement in cases of death or serious injury where there is probable cause for DWI. Such procedure is common in other states, notes defense attorney Howard Weiner in the Times. Local laws, Weiner said, are "much more protective of drivers than those in other parts of the country."

While the New York State Senate scrambles to salvage some dignity from the current legislative session, the Assembly has busied itself with a flurry of one-house lawmaking. Last week, for instance, the chamber passed a safe driving bill aimed primarily at teen drivers, sponsored by transportation committee chair David Gantt. It includes some good stuff, like extending the number of practice hours that must be completed before taking the driver's license exam. And it would create a new traffic infraction to penalize driving while texting or using any handheld electronic device, no matter how old you are. The bill cleared the Assembly in a 146-0 vote.

On the merits, the texting "ban" is weaker than another bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, which the transportation committee never brought up for a vote. Under the Gantt bill, a driver could be fined, but not pulled over, for texting behind the wheel.

"While we certainly support the intent of the bill, we have questions about specific language which would seem to greatly restrict its actual application," said TA's Peter Goldwasser in an email. "In short, unless an individual is committing another, different violation in the first place, then he or she is not subject to receiving a summons for violating this new offense."

In 2007, there were nearly 10,500 crashes in New York where the contributing factor was driver inattention or distraction, Goldwasser noted. Shouldn't that be enough reason to make distracted driving a standalone violation?

On balance, this bill would be a step forward for street safety in New York, but with the State Senate in the midst of its epic breakdown, the odds of it becoming law -- during this session, at least -- are vanishingly small. (So far, there's not even a version of this bill in the Senate.) This will be something to keep an eye on in the next legislative session. The speaker, the transportation committee chair, and the whole Assembly are on record supporting this bill, so there's no reason it shouldn't pass again when the opportunity arises.

Last week Streetsblog followed up on the stalled progress of a statewide texting-while-driving ban, a bill that appears to be going nowhere even though almost everyone on the Assembly transportation committee supports it, according to Brooklyn representative Felix Ortiz.

When we contacted Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's office, a spokesperson told us that it's up to the committee chair to move the bill forward. That would be Rochester Democrat David Gantt. But why should one person have such power when the overwhelming majority of his members disagree? And is Gantt really the guy making that call -- or is it Sheldon Silver?

To get a sense of the dynamics at work here, Streetsblog called Laura Seago, a researcher at NYU's Brennan Center for Justice and co-author of the aptly titled report on Albany dysfunction, "Still Broken" [PDF].

"I would be surprised if Sheldon Silver wasn't involved," Seago said of the texting ban. "This is something we see all the time, unfortunately, which is that the speaker controls everything that comes to the floor."

While Gantt makes a convenient target, and it's conceivable, in Seago's words, that he was "acting freelance" on this one, the fact remains that Silver could easily move the texting ban forward if he chose to do so.

In a legislature that functions democratically, the members of the transportation committee could also override the objections of their chair or the leader of their chamber. But that's not how things work in Albany.

Read more...

Video: Elizabeth Benjamin/The Daily Politics.

We were half-kidding last week when we said state legislators were open to taxing anything from pet food to shoelaces as long as they could say they had saved the MTA, and as long as drivers could continue to cross East and Harlem River bridges at no cost. Turns out it's no joke after all, according to Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith.

Following another futile secret meeting late yesterday with his Assembly counterpart Sheldon Silver and Governor David Paterson, Smith acknowledged that at this point any revenue source will do. The Politicker reports:

"It's not about merits," Smith said. "It's just about what gets us there with the votes that we need to get it passed. Because there are things in this plan that, somebody's not going to like something. At some point, you just have to sort of toughen up a little bit and make the tough decisions."

"It's not about merits" goes a long way toward explaining Smith's proposal to substitute bridge tolls with a taxi surcharge, a scheme that by one columnist's count has the support of Smith, Carl Kruger, and no one else. It could also serve to sum up Smith's idea of "reform" in Albany, at least as it applies to the MTA funding crisis. Consider his comments when The Fare Hike Four unveiled their cockamamie plan.

Liz Benjamin asked Smith whether the fact that the new plan clearly represents the thinking of the old Gang of Three was a sign of his own weakness. He said it was just part of the "paradigm shift."

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Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith has come out with another MTA funding proposal, which again gives commuters who drive across East and Harlem River bridges a free pass. The $1.76 billion it would generate annually for the MTA falls more than $300 million short of the projected revenue from the original Ravitch plan ($2.1 billion). Liz Benjamin at the Daily Politics has the details:

Under the Democrats' proposal, which does not yet exist in bill form, the payroll tax would be 34 cents per $100 in the 12-county MTA service area, but it would be graduated so the outlying counties would pay less (exactly how much less was not immediately clear).

The payroll tax would generate the lion's share of revenue: $1.49 billion.

Another key feature: a $1 taxi drop-off fee (50 cents more than what was originally on the table).

Half of the $190 million this fee is expected to generate would be used to pay the $95 million debt service on a $1.2 billion capital plan for roads and bridges upstate and on Long Island -- a move designed to woo GOP lawmakers and suburban Democrats who have so far dug in their heels in opposition to the payroll tax.

Other highlights:

- A $25 motor vehicle registration fee - on top of the existing fee, which was increased in this year's budget. ($130 million).

- Boosting the auto rental surcharge from 6 to 11 percent. ($35 million).

- A 25 percent increase in the motor vehicle license fee. ($10.5 million).

The proposal also includes several measures related to MTA governance and financial disclosure. Smith has not yet lined up the 32 votes needed to pass a plan in the State Senate, but spokesman Austin Shafran expressed confidence that a majority can be wrangled, reports Politicker's Jimmy Vielkind.

In a statement, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver left the door open -- fairly wide, I'd say -- to supporting the proposal:

I am willing to support any plan that provides a stable, long term funding stream for mass transit and apportions the burden equitably among everyone who has a stake in the MTA's future.

I have not had an opportunity to fully review the Senate's plan, but if it can accomplish both of those objectives and command the support of the majority of Senators then it is an alternative we're prepared to take very seriously.

Let's just focus on the revenue here. Smith's plan appears to fall short of Shelly's own by around $150 - $200 million per year, so something's got to give. Assuming the fare hike is held down to the range of eight percent, that means the Senate Dems are still prepared to sock New Yorkers with some combination of service cuts and slapdash investment in maintenance and expansion. Will that qualify as "a stable, long term funding stream" that "apportions the burden equitably"? With the MTA's financial picture growing bleaker by the day and the need for a robust plan all the more apparent, the only answer that makes sense is "No."